I want to do a thread about cold audience vs warm audience reader behaviour that I have noticed in myself, and how it affects book marketing, especially CPC ads (cost per click, like FB and AMS ads), but also curated promotion like BookBub featured deals.

When we promote a book, we measure success both on sales/volume moved of that book, but also on sell-through to subsequent titles in our catalogue (especially if we're pushing a loss leader designed to trigger read through!). This is conversion.

Conversion from a single sale to a reader clicking through an entire series happens in two ways: immediate one-clicking, and after reading the book one-clicking.

Book 1 is on sale or free, and 1000 people grab it. That same day, 20 people buy book 2. Over the next month, 100 more people buy book 2 in a "tail" following the promotion.

These are two very distinct behaviours.

The immediate sell through, book-one-unread, is about the cover, title, and blurb of the next book, and maybe the series construct, too. Something tells the reader, you will like all of these, grab them now.

The longer sell through is about having enjoyed book 1, wanting more.

The more standalone the books look, the less it happens - that's my biggest problem! Even if I write hooky epilogues that tease into what comes next, that requires people have actually cracked the spine on the book they grabbed on sale.

When I'm puzzling through a marketing dilemma like this, I like to look at my own behaviour as a reader. And recently, I did both of these things, within the same author's catalogue. This isn't scientific, but I thought I'd share my anecdata.

There was a 99 cent BookBub on book 4 in a sports romance series. I read the blurb, recognized the author name, and bought it. On the next screen after one-clicking, the retailer showed me one of the other books in the series. My reader lizard brain was like, YES, ALL OF THEM.

I one-clicked the entire series without having read that sale book, because I knew I would want to read every book about a team member of that sports team.

Now, that sale book spun off into another series, about the heroine's brothers. I figured that out pretty quickly.

I looked at those books, noted the connection, but DID NOT immediately buy them. Not because I wasn't interested, but because my reader lizard brain didn't NEED them immediately.

It wasn't until I finished the series that I bought that second series. This is a warm audience behaviour, quite different from that cold audience behaviour of one-clicking even before the first purchased book is read.

Knowing these two patterns of behaviour is only part of understanding why some ads work and some don't, why some series see better sell through than others. But I want to underline that this particular author is very talented, and all the books are equally amazing.

Marketing, especially to a cold audience, is an art form, and a different art form than writing a book. And it's infinitely easier when we understand reader psychology and the fact that reader behaviour is not a reflection on our talents as writers.

(And I think the author might recognize herself in this thread, so I really want to underline again that my reader lizard brain absolutely loves all of her books, but there's something extra id-y about the sports romance and IDK why???)